Twm Edwards jig

Ah, another aerosolized spritz of cheez….

How long have you had had this cheese obsession?

No, no, you’re providing the cheese here…I’ve got the crackers.

If you don’t like a particular tune,that doesn’t mean that it’s not a good one.What is the problem? It all comes down to personal taste.

Take a gander at Jeremy’s suggestions below, after “Post a comment:”

Okay--some tunes strike me as trite, eye-rollers if you hauled them out at a session. This is one of those. And so was ‘Down the Tannoch Road’ (which was actually worse). Two clunkers in a row, and you hit my saturation point for tunes I would never learn (and that I’ve never heard in any session). So I’m giving you a bit of slagging in hopes you’ll post something more interesting. I’d like it if you aimed for quality over quantity…rather than a tune a day, how about one really great tune a week?

And please consider posting some comments about each tune--where you learned it, what tunes you play it with, why you like it, etc. One thing we’ve discussed here before--and us old codgers try to discourage--is posting tunes that you don’t actually play. It dilutes the data base here to simply copy tunes from a book or other online source without living inside the tune first as a player. If you’re hoping other people will give these tunes a go, you’ll fare better if you give us some background and a sense of your own enthusiasm for them. Otherwise, why bother posting them?

BTW, nice try on the Widow’s Maggot, but it’s already in the archives as Paddy Be Easy.

Of course, this is just me being whingey. Nothing personal against you…just some of the tunes you’ve posted (and your chronic lack of comments).

And put something in your bio! 🙂

Will’s got a point. I myself perhaps have been guilty in the past of posting tunes from books and other sources, but now hopefully have seen the error of my ways - ahem.
I now try to post tunes that either come up in sessions or ones I’ve been taught at workshops - and these are invariably worth bringing to people’s attention. About the only exception is to post a tune in response to someone’s request (as I did recently with “Lovely Leitrim”), but then it isn’t really *my* tune - it must be assumed to be someone else’s who obviously is having a problem in tracking it down.
Trevor

Another exception that comes to mind is the tune that one has composed oneself - and you’re not likely to see one of those from me any time soon! Jeremy somewhere suggested that people who post their own tunes should balance that input with a larger input of other tunes.
Trevor

Ok,I’ll post comments with tunes in future.I do play all the tunes that I post,and to get back to my earlier point,who decides if tunes are,to use your description,clunkers? I like Down The Tannoch Road and Twm Edwards,but you don’t.I don’t like The Bucks Of Oranmore,The Pinch Of Snuff or Toss The Feathers,but that doesn’t make them bad tunes.Down The Tannoch Road sounds like a simpler version of Kathleen O’Hehir’s to me so that’s why I posted it.Twm Edwards is widely played in sessions in Wales and contains some of those unexpected turns that are so common in Welsh Music.I just wanted to share it

Sure--personal taste. I’ve enjoyed a few of the Welsh tunes posted here previously, but not most of them. And bear in mind (we’ve had this discussion before) that this site is primarily for tunes from the Irish dance music tradition. Some tunes make it into that tradition (via sessions and recordings) from Wales, Cape Breton, Scotland, Brittany, etc., but this isn’t the place for piles of Welsh (or American Old Timey, or Brasilian Salsa…) tunes. So the reason you’ll find Bucks of Oranmore, the Pinch of Snuff, and Toss the Feathers here is because they come out of the Irish dance music tradition, people play them regularly at Irish sessions around the world, and other people want to learn them, so they too can play them at sessions. (It has little to do with whether everyone here likes those tunes or not, but apparently enough people do that they get widely played at sessions.) Outside of Wales, I doubt many Irish sessions include very many Welsh tunes.

BTW, one outcome of our last debate about Welsh tunes was that someone started a web site for Welsh trad music. Search the links--it’s probably in there somewhere.

Again, I don’t mean to be picking on you, or really even on your choice in music. But your emphasis on Welsh stuff seems misplaced to me here. And that’s just my opinion.

Here ’tis: http://www.welshtraditionalmusic.com/

And please don’t mistake my outburst over Twm Edwards and Down the Tannoch Road for something more than that. I do appreciate some of the other tunes you’ve submitted, and it helps a lot to see your comments now on your sources for them. Thanks.

I ratherlike the tunes from other cultures. Lets face it, a continuous diet of reels in G and D gets very samey. I thought Twm Edwards had a couple of good corners in it which one could use to make the tune interesting if you played it as a Welsh tune. If you play it like an Irish jig it doesn’t work at all.

I would imagine that one of the major problems with making this forum an Irish only site would be that the many postees would be unaware of the original sources and composers of their tunes. There might be reasons for this. Native Irish players are more concerned with knowing the tunes than the names, so it can be very hard to get the true identity of a tune that one has learnt in a session. American players seem more concerned about who they learnt a tune from rather than the original composer. I can understand both these positions, though it is a bit iritating when a Northumbrian tune gets labeled as “Traditional Irish” or “A New England Contra” when it would still be strongly linked with the original composer in Northumbria.

Anyway, I hope we will see lots of good tunes from Wales and elsewhere on this site. Some Welsh tunes are totally addictive. Try Blodau’r Drain (The Flowers of the Thorn) for starters.

Noel Jackson
Angels of the North

Er…no, I doubt we’ll ever see “lots of good tunes from Wales and elsewhere on this site”, actually…been through this before! 🙂 If they’re good tunes from elsewhere that are played regularly at Irish sessions around the world, then yeah, we’ll probably see them here, but it’s pretty well established at this point that this is largely an Irish only tune archive…

Oh do stop bickering 🙂

Irish musicians have always absorbed tunes from other cultures.Rakish Paddy is an Irish piper’s version of the Scottish tune,Caber Feigh.A tradition that stops assimilating outside influences is a moribund tradition.I agree with Noelbats, a diet of nothing but reels gets very samey.I love going to sessions,but the trend seems to be to play mainly reels,especially among the younger players here in Belgium.I don’t know why this has come about.When I started going to sessions they were a mixture of jigs,reels,polkas,mazurkas,waltzes, the lot.If I start up Sonny’s Mazuka or The Munster Cloak nowadays only one or two of the older players know them.If I start up The 93’ds Farewell to Gibraltar,which used to be a session tune,the younger guys wrinkle up their noses as if there’s a bad smell and wait impaitently till I finish,and then start up a set of reels from the latest Altan cd.Don’t get me wrong,I love reels,but when a session consists of 80 per cent reels,it does get a little boring,especially for the punters in the pub. By the way,if you are going to play Twm Edwards,no rolls and at a relaxed pace.

I agrre with you, David. Too many reels in the sessions.
( I like polkas and slides )

If they’re good tunes from elsewhere that are played regularly at Irish sessions around the world, then yeah, we’ll probably see them here, but it’s pretty well established at this point that this is largely an Irish only tune archive…

I’m glad that Gian Marco agrees thatt there are to many reels in sessions.How did this situation arise? Is it because the younger players are influenced by recordings?If you look at cd’s released by Dervish,Altan,Lunansa et al in the last few years,reels predominate.When I was learning to play in the 70’s I listened to albums by The Chieftains,Na Fili,The Battlefield Band,The Boys Of The Lough and others. On those albums,especially the Chieftains early ones,there was always a judicious mixture of all the types of Irish dance music.When did reels become the staple diet? Variety is the spice of life.It’s come to a pretty pass when young players in sessions don’t know Banish Misfortune,The Gander In The Praitie Hole and The Hag With Money .I’m speaking from expierience here.

AKA Tom Edwards and I’ve seen it as Tom Jones also. Unless there’s going to be some knd of “Irish only” censorship commitee screening tunes, you Irish Only whiners oughta just lighten up, maybe pry open your narrow little minds a bit and actually try playing some of these other tunes. I enjoy playing Tom Edwards and I like playing Old Molly Hare and the Shaskeen Reel, “the old-timey way”. Music is for sharing, so let’s lighten up a bit.

I couldn’t agree more with ffidylguy.Share the music and ignore the ITM police.

Funny how some people can walk into a conversation about soup recipes and insist on changing the subject to chemical additives that help paint dry, and then complain when the soup recipe folks try to change the subject back to soup recipes….

I doubt we’ll ever see “lots of good tunes from Wales and elsewhere on this site”, actually…been through this before! 🙂 If they’re good tunes from elsewhere that are played regularly at Irish sessions around the world, then yeah, we’ll probably see them here, but it’s pretty well established at this point that this is largely an Irish only tune archive…

This is not the tune “Twm Edwards” / “Tom Edwards”, which is a 3-part tune well known in Cymru / Wales ~ its parts starting so, just the first two bars of each part are given:

K: G Major
Part-A
|: GAG BGB | dBd gdB | ~ four bars repeating…
Part-B
|: gbg ege | faf dfd | ~ four bars repeating…
Part-C
|: cdc c2 a | BcB B2 g | ~ four bars repeating…